


Ancient Coding

by JantoJones



Series: Drabbles and Dribbles Two (The 2nd 100) [89]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 18:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18922489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JantoJones/pseuds/JantoJones





	Ancient Coding

After a long search of the defeated Thrush’s office, the only thing Napoleon found that caught his attention was a long strip of paper. It had a random assortment of letters written along it.

“What do you think of this?” he asked his partner. “Mark and April found two of these last week.”

Having only just returned from Greece, Illya was slightly out of the loop, but he instantly recognised the paper for what it was. During his downtime in Athens, he’d spent time in museums; where he had seen one.

“It’s a Scytale,” he told Napoleon. “There should be a rod with it.”

Napoleon opened the drawer in which he’d found the paper. Sure enough, he found a hexagonal rod. He handed it, and the paper strip, to Illya. The Russian carefully wound the strip around the wood and showed Solo the result. The meaningless letters had magically become words. The design of the rod meant that six lines containing eight letters could be ciphered. All that was needed was to work out where the spaces would go.

“Thrush have returned to ancient methods,” said Illya.

“Let’s hope they don’t realise too quickly that we have their new secret.”


End file.
